Written by: Scott Snyder, Tony Patrick
Art by: Cully Hamner
Published by: DC Comics
Duke Thomas takes up the reigns in this new Batman story!
Finding a right way to introduce another member of the Bat Family can always be challenging. We have had so many iterations of different characters, so many Robins, Batgirls, and so on and so forth. This is where Snyder and Tony Patrick take a right approach. Enter Signal.
This issue manages to bring another interesting character into the lore but not without faults. There are a lot of the usual tropes here, and the villain is rather generic. Other than that though, the family drama that occurs is rather interesting and brings both a bit of levity but also weight to Duke’s character. The last time we really had any significant time with him was back during the “We are Robin” storyline, but even then, he was stuck bouncing off many other characters.
The greatest success here is that Snyder and Patrick concentrate on Duke alone and everyone else is just secondary.
Cully Hamner is a very fitting artist, able to portray everything he needs to about Duke’s character and the many emotions on display in this issue. All of them are done very well and never too cartoony, which is always a fear when trying to introduce what’s essentially another of Batman’s sidekicks. The fact that The Signal is not written as a sidekick really allows Hamner to expand his stylistic palette, and it works to the benefit of both the story and the reader.
Batman and the Signal is a worthy addition to the Batman mythos, managing to expand on Duke’s character in a way that I never believed ever would get done. After “Robin War” it almost seemed like Duke Thomas was put in to just be a bit character. I am certainly glad they were able to provide more story for him. This book manages to tell a somewhat-compelling story about someone that both wants to and does not want to be in Batman’s world. It is definitely worth reading on that aspect alone.
